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Civil Society, Liberalism and the Corporatist Alternative in the Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Louis J. Cantori
Louis J. Cantori*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland-Baltimore County
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Extract

Democracy has returned to the center stage of American political science. Before World War I, political science assumed the universality of democracy in America. Its educational mission was to inform American citizens of this, its research mission to identify the imperfections of this democracy in order to reform it and to provide academic expertise to strengthen the American state administratively in its democratic mission.’ Post-behavioral political scientists in the 1990s also assume the universality of democracy, now on an international and cross-cultural basis. They also wish to inform the American public of this, and when they uncover it they also wish to reform it through their writings and through the support of indigenous intellectuals and scholars. The incentives, coercion and pressure of the US government assist them in their efforts. They are also engaged in the strengthening of the capabilities of the American state in spreading the democratic message abroad. This collaboration of government and scholar from the 1986 announcement of the Reagan Doctrine and the founding of the National Endowment for Democracy until today has been termed “Operation Democracy.”

Type
Review Article
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , July 1997 , pp. 34 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 1997

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References

Notes

1 This is the central theme of Seidelman, Raymond, Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

2 The phrase is from Wolin, Sheldon, “Democracy and Operation Democracy” in Wolin, Sheldon, ed., The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and Constitution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1989), pp. 192–207Google Scholar. See also, Cantori, Louis J., “The American Way: American Development Policy in the Middle East,” Middle East Policy, January 1997 (V, No. 1), 170–177.Google Scholar

3 Seidelman, p. 157. Also, Packenham, Robert, Liberal America and the Third “World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973Google Scholar) and Kesselman, Mark, “Order or Movement: The Literature of Development as Ideology,” World Politics, XXVI (October 1973), 139–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 McNeill’s, William H. review of Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon Schuster, 1996)Google Scholar, New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 18.

5 Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History (New York: The Free Press, 1992).Google Scholar

6 Cantori, Louis J., “The Old Orthodoxy and the New Orthodoxy in the Study of Middle Eastern Politics,” Political Science and Politics, XXVII, No. 3 (September 1994), 515–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Tucker, Robert W. and Henderson, David C., The Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America’s Purpose (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1992)Google Scholar. On Pax Americana in the Middle East see Shlaim, Avi, War and Peace in the Middle East (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), pp. 132–146.Google Scholar

8 August Norton, Richard, ed., Civil Society in the Middle East, Vols. I and II (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995, 1996).Google Scholar

9 Ibid., I, 11.

10 Ibid., 1.

11 Ibid., 7.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 8.

14 Louis J. Cantori, “Privatization, Culture and the Corporatist Moroccan State,” Conference Group on the Middle East, American Political Science Association, New York, September 2-4, 1994, pp. 6-8.

15 Cantori, Louis J., “The Asian Way,’ the ‘Western Way,’ and the ‘Islamic Way’ to Economic Growth,” The Diplomat (London), II, No. 4 (February 1997), 44–45.Google Scholar

16 Norton, I, 11.

17 Ibid., 12.

18 Ibid., 10.

19 Ibid., 9-11.

20 The idea of self-subsistent non-political corporatist groups in civil society being linked to an authoritative religious state originates with Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1820) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), p. 189 regarding groups and pp. 166-174 regarding state support of religion. His ideas as philosophical conservatism were to dominate German politics for the remainder of the 19th century and beyond (Ralph Bowen, German Theories of the Corporative State [New York: McGraw Hill, 1947]). These ideas combined with those of social Catholicism were to have a similar importance in France (M.H. Elbow, French Corporative Theory 1789-1947 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1953]). The link of corporatism to fascism (for example by Phillippe Schmitter in his important article which relabeled it neocorporatism, “Still the Century of Corporatism?” in Frederick B. Pike and Thomas Strich, eds. The New Corporatism [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1974], pp. 85-131) has resulted in the lack of appreciation of corporatism as an alternative to liberalism and Marxism. While the concept has had a certain importance in the study of Latin American politics (e.g., Howard Wiarda, Corporatism and Development [Amherst, MA.: University of Massachusetts, 1977]), it is only taken up by John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), Allan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990). Volker Perthes has applied it to Syria (“Syria’s Parliamentary Elections,” Middle East Report, 22, No. 174 [January-February 1992]). For the application of the concept to Egypt as the neologism takafaliyya (literally, “mutual responsibility”—suggested by Dr. Ramadan Abdallah), see L. Cantori, “Muhafaza wa al-Taqaddam: Misr al-Ahya al-Islamiyya,” Qira’at Siyasiyya (Beirut), 3 (1993), 8-26 (updated version of “The Islamic Revival as Conservatism and as Progress in Egypt” in Emile Sahliyeh, ed., Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World [Albany: State University Press of New York, 1990], pp. 183-194).

21 Examples are Hinnebusch, Raymond, “State, Civil Society and Political Change in Syria,” I, 221Google Scholar; al-Sayyid, Mustapha Kamil, “A Civil Society in Egypt,” I, 272Google Scholar; Entelis, John, “Civil Society and the Authoritarian Temptation in Algerian Politics: Islamic Democracy vs. the Centralized State,” II, 77Google Scholar; Kazemi, Farhad, “Civil Society in Iran,” II, 150Google Scholar; Crystal, Jill, “Civil Society in the Arabian Gulf,” II, 275Google Scholar; Carapico, Sheila, “Yemen Between Civility and Civil War,” II, 287.Google Scholar

22 From Schaffle, Albert, “Über den Wissenschaftlichen Begriff der Politik,” Zeitschrift fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 53 (1897)Google Scholar, and especially Mannilesco, Mihail, Le Siecle du Corporatisme (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1934)Google Scholar.

23 Moussalli, Ahmad, “Modern Islamic Fundamentalist Discourses on Civil Society, Pluralism, and Democracy,” e.g., Hasan al-Banna and shura, I, 100Google Scholar; al-Awwa, Muhammad S. and a pluralism that works for the interest of society via shura, II, 107Google Scholar; Hassan al-Turabi and shura and ijmaa, 108.

24 Seef.n. 21, above.

25 Ibrahim, Saad Eddine, “Civil Society and the Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World,” I, 30–32Google Scholar, and Moussalli, 86-87.

26 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, The Philosophy of History, SibreeTranslator, J. Translator, J. (New York: Dover, 1956), pp. 19, 26–27.Google Scholar

27 Bellin, Eva, “Civil Society in Formation: Tunisia” I, 130, 136 (f.n. 38)Google Scholar; Hicks, Neil and al-Najjar, Ghanim, “The Utility of Tradition: Civil Society in Kuwait,” I, 194Google Scholar; al-Sayyid, I, 282; Entelis, I, 67.

28 This is the mean for five Middle Eastern states (Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia). Table 5, “Distribution of Income,” World Development Report 1996 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996), pp. 196-197.

29 Bellin, I, 144.

30 al-Sayyid, I, 285.

31 Brandt, Laurie, “In the Beginning was the State: The Quest for Civil Society in Jordan,” I, 148.Google Scholar

32 Doron, Gideon, “Two Civil Societies and One State: Jews and Arabs in the State of Israel,” I, 204–210.Google Scholar

33 Entelis, II, 68.

34 al-Sayyid, I, 289.

35 Lesch, Ann Mosely, “The Destruction of Civil Society in Sudan,” II, 153–192.Google Scholar

36 Carapico, II, 287-316.

37 Crystal, II, 259-286.

38 Muslih, Muhammad, “Palestinian Civil Society,” I, 243-268, for the West Bank and especially Sara Roy, “Civil Society in the Gaza Strip: Obstacles to Social Reconstruction,” II, 221–258Google Scholar, for an especially dispiriting account of a very bitter place.

39 Hicks and al-Najjar, I, 186-213.

40 Democratic elitism is not unique to the Middle East. Mainstream political science often refers to democratic elitism both as a matter of political science theory and as a matter of practice in American politics. For example, see the references to Lasswell and Truman as two important political scientists in Seidelman, pp. 133-145 and 173-184, respectively, and Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (New York: Atherton, 1967).